Special Post - Free Email Newletters to Find Great Books

 

Situation: 

I get asked by friends where they can find interesting books, not just not just something popular from the list of New York Times Bestsellers. They need an ongoing resource to consistently dangle titles in front of them, books which are quality reads with interesting characters and challenging, funny, or transporting plots. They want something out of the ordinary, something they will enjoy reading. 

 
My Solution:
 

Six years ago I wrote a Special Post - Resources for Finding Great Books, but now need to update the electronic newsletters portion. Below are some free email newsletters chock full of brilliant, quirky, and certainly tempting books that I use to learn about new and old titles. Just give them your email address and sit back to watch your In-box fill up with tempting titles of books soon to be published, currently under the radar, classics from the past, and loads of other book-related articles. 

Happy reading.

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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Free Email Book Newsletters
(Click on any title to read more and sign up)

BookBrowse

This newsletter from librarians also provides a longer list of titles with reviews than other book sites, but these books all seem deliciously enticing due to the quality of synopsis and praise they receive.

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The Booklist Corner Shelf

Another librarian-run newsletter, this one is a bit lower key and a lot of fun to read, both for the books they select to review and the writing itself.

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The Cottage Bookshop

Probably the newsletter I most look forward to, this monthly posting covers books I usually haven't heard of, yet are always intriguing.

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Gramercy Books

Have to put in a plug for my local indie bookstore here in Columbus, Ohio, Gramercy Books. Always something interesting to suggest in the way of book titles, gifts, author events, and an overall general good feeling about reading and books.

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The Guardian Bookmarks

Great reviews of newer books, plus lots of general book-related commentary, articles, links, and discussion. Very good site to stimulate loads of ideas and thoughts

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Libraryreads Newsletter

Top ten books of the week that :library staff across the country love." What could be better?

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LitHub Weekly 

Very extensive, eclectic, and sophisticated newsletter chock full of articles, essays, book recommendations, and other book-related items.

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Penguin Books Newsletter
From the UK is this unique newsletter reviewing books, offering author interviews, and links to fascinating articles of literary and unusual book-themed nature.

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RJ Julia Just the Right Book

This tiny but completely well-stocked bookshop in Connecticut is world famous for having a great selection of books. Of course, their newsletter introduces readers to wonderful books and gifts from their store.

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Shelf Awareness

The top twenty-five books of the week as selected by book dealers, publishers, and librarians. Also includes author interviews, games, and links to reviews for unusual books, book-related articles and events of the week. (Sent twice weekly, but isn't overwhelming).

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Vintage Books

A offshoot of Penguin Books, this newsletter offers more obscure books that have proved to be delightful reads for me.

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The Washington Post Bookclub

Lengthy, but not overpowering, list of book recommendations for highly interesting titles, articles, and author interviews. Very well-written in all aspects.

Awake in the Dark

Ebert, Roger. Awake in the Dark: Forty Years of Reviews, Essays, and Interviews. New York: University of Chicago 2006. Print

First Sentences:

I began my work as a film critic in 1967, although one of the pieces in this book goes back to my days on the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois. 

I had not thought to be a film critic, and indeed had few firm career plans apart from vague notions that I might someday be a political columnist of a professor of English. 


Description:

As a lover of films, finding a go-to reviewer is vital to deciding whether a specific movie will be interesting enough to actually spend time and money to see it. For me, such a reviewer needs to have insight, humor, quality writing, and no fear to tell it like the movie is, whether good or bad. Of course, my personal go-to reviewer for many years has been Roger Ebert. 

The task of every movie is to try to change how you feel and think during its running time. That it is not important to have a "good time" but very important not to have your time wasted....A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is .... about the way it considers its subject matter, 

The best of his writing for the Chicago Sun Times (and a few other outlets) are gathered in

Awake in the Dark. There are 91 reviews here (yes, I counted them), divided into categories of "Interviews and Profiles," "The Best," "Foreign Films," "Documentaries,"  and "Overlooked and Underrated." Ebert includes introductions for each category, along with extra essays on "Think Pieces," writing about film criticism, and even his piece "On the Meaning of Life ...and Movies." 

There is also some autobiographical information on his youth growing up in Champaign-Urbana, sneaking into the only movie theater in town, and his first reviews for the University of Chicago student newspaper. Ebert even throws in some history of moving pictures from the Lumiere brothers and George Melies, to the first film of a train arriving in a Paris station which caused audiences "to dive out of the way." 

To see three movies during a routine workday or thirty movies a week at a film festival is a good job to have.

Artists whom Ebert interviewed range from Warren Beatty to Ingmar Bergman to Meryl Streep to Spike Lee. Awake in the Dark provides Ebert's list of his top ten movies from every year from 1967 - 2005, then offers his review of the Number One movie from his list for each year. These reviews start with Bonnie and Clyde (1967) through Sophie's Choice (1982), to Do the Right Thing (1989), to Crash (2005). 

What makes these insightful reviews so interesting to me is that they were published as the movie was first released. His observations are the first look offered to potential audiences for such films as Five Easy Pieces, Amadeus, Fargo, Being John Malkovich, and Cries and Whispers. It's easy to see a movie years after its release and judge it to be a classic. Ebert is able to recognize a golden film as soon as he views it in the screening room, and shares why he knows it will be a classic for future movie-goers.

If the magical elements in a movie -- story, director, actors -- are assembled for magical reasons -- to delight, to move, to astound -- then something good often results. But when they are assembled simply as a "package," as a formula to suck in the customers, they are good only if a miracle happens.

If you can't find something here you are curious to read Ebert's opinions on, you can't possibly call yourself a film enthusiast. Personally, I loved every review/essay/commentary Ebert included in this fine collection. He introduced me to movies I had never heard of, helped me understand films I didn't get or like the first time I viewed them, and reinforced the good impressions I had for several of my favorite movies.

Pick it up, flip through it to a favorite (or hated) movie and get his insight on what makes that film worthwhile. You won't be sorry.

And by the way, if you are looking for the reviews of movies he didn't like, be sure to read, I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie. Here he again demonstrates his command of words and films to describe the worst of this field in extremely clever, deflating ways. You cannot help but smile at such reviews as:

Dear God is the kind of movie where you walk out repeating the title, but not with a smile.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Kael, Pauline. I Lost It at the Movies.   

One of the definitive voices among film reviewers, Kael wrote for the New Yorker for years. This book compiles some of her best work and captures her discerning, often caustic voice that still reflect her overall love of movies.

What To Read and Why

Prose, Francine. What To Read and Why. New York: HarperCollins 2018. Print

First Sentences:

Reading is among the most private, the most solitary things that we can do.

A book is a kind of refuge to which we can go for the assurance that, as long as we are reading, we can leave the worries and cares of our everyday lives behind us and enter, however briefly, another reality, populated by other lives, a world distant in time and place from our own, or else reflective of the present moment in ways that may help us see that moment more clearly.

Description:

The books I most eagerly and thoroughly enjoy are those that tell me about other books. Whether through an author's personal reading preferences like Book Lust by Nancy Pearl or Joe Queenen's One For the Books, or by recounting personal adventures with books like The Shelf (reading an entire shelf of library books) by Phyllis Rose or The Know-It-All (reading the entire encyclopedia) by A.J. Jacobs, anything that describes and thereby promotes great, interesting books is always my first choice.

What To Read and Why by Francine Prose ably fills the bill for me. She clearly understands the double joy of reading: the solitary time in the author's world and then the sharing of the book's ideas with others. And she suggests that "You've got to read this" are the words that should open every positive book review. She feels the best reviews of recommended books really are telling readers to "Drop everything. Start reading. Now."

Reading and writing are solitary activities, and yet there is a social component that comes into play when we tell someone else about what we have read. An additional pleasure of reading is that you can urge and sometimes even persuade people you know and care about, and even people you don't know, to read the book you've just finished and admired -- and that you think they would like, too. 

In What to Read, each of its thirty-three chapters covers one highly recommended book and author. They range from the more recognized Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and George Eliot's Middlemarch to the lesser-know (at least to me) Roberto Bolano's 2666 and Mark Strand's Mr. and Mrs. Baby. Along the way author Prose covers the lives (briefly) and books by Austen, Alcott, Munro, and Knausgaard, as well as Charles Baxter, Deborah Levy, and Mohsin Hamid, all of whom I was to varying degrees unfamiliar with.

Prose even includes a couple of chapters on related topics such as "On Clarity," "What Makes a Short Story?",  and "On the Erotic and Pornographic." Got your interest yet? Surely there is something to whet anyone's reading appetite in What To Read and Why. 

Here's a writer who clearly loves to read and enthusiastically share her gems will all of us. Now, a few tidbits to get you excited about her recommendations:

• [on "The Collected Stories" of Mavis Gallant]: I feel  kind of messianic zeal, which I share with other writers and readers, to make sure that Gallant's work continues to be read, admired -- and loved....She builds her fictions with moments and incidents so revealing and resonant that another writer might have made each one a separate story....Her fiction has the originality and profundity, the clarity, the breadth of vision, wit, the mystery, the ability to make us feel that a work has found its ideal form, that no one word could be changed, all of which re recognize as being among the great wonders of art.

• [on Patrick Hamilton]: With their intense, and intensely mixed, sympathies for the men and women who haunted the pubs and walked the streets of London's tawdrier districts just before, during, and after World War II, Patrick Hamilton's novels are dark tunnels of misery, loneliness, deceit, and sexual obsession, illuminated by scenes so funny that it takes a while to register the sheer awfulness of what we have just red.

• [on Andrea Canobbio]: Canobbio...avoids the obvious pitfalls, largely as a result of his acuity and inventiveness, of the specificity and density of his detail, the elegance of his style, and the depth of his psychological insight.

• [on Elizabeth Taylor (the author, not the actress)]: The best of her fiction is extremely funny, incisive, sympathetic, and beautifully written, but it can also make us squirm with uneasy recognition and tell us more than we might choose to hear about ourselves and our neighbors. Awful things happen in those narratives, not in the sense of violence and gore but of characters realizing awful truths about the lives in which they are hopelessly mired.

• [on Jane Austen]: No other novelist combined such a subtle, delicate moral sensibility with such a firm, no-nonsense grasp of the most material realities -- of the fact that money determines one's opportunity to live in the tranquil and gracious style to which one is (or would like to be) accustomed.

• [on Stanley Elkin]: Stanley was not only a maximalist of language, but also one of truth....That was one of the most astonishing and special qualities of his work: that piling on more and more -- more metaphors, more world, more sentences, more humor, more energy -- as a way of delving into, bringing to light, and forcing us to look directly into the heart of the simultaneously dark and scintillating mystery of what makes us human. 

Well, you get the idea. Francine Prose is a gifted writer herself, willing to read widely, analyze the importance of great writing, and share her loves with us. No one could pick up What To Read and Why without finding something unexpected and alluring, an author, title or review, that will make them immediately go into a bookstore, library, or online to obtain a copy of this new treasure. Highly recommended. 

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Pearl, Nancy. Book Lust.   

Absolutely the best, most compelling, delightful reviews of hundreds of recommended titles from the head librarian of the Seattle Public Library. Irresistible, and best of all Pearl has several other Book Lust titles available for travel, teens, etc. (previously reviewed here)

The Year of Reading Dangerously

Miller, Andy. The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life. New York: Harper. 2014. Print.

First Sentences:

My life is nothing special. It is every bit as dreary as yours.

Description:

I just love books about books. That's just all there is too it. And what's not to like? Such books contain lists of recommended books, commentary by a clever reader, and back stories behind choices, disappointments, and treasures. Humor writer Andy Miller in his The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life delivers on all levels.

He documents the year he decided to read fifty books, "some of the greatest and most famous books in the world, and two by Dan Brown." These are books he had avoided throughout his life, not necessarily the best books ever written. His list is whimsical, ranging from Middlemarch to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, from On The Road to I Capture the Castle.

For each book, Miller writes a story. A ranging, funny, serious stream of consciousness evaluation of what the book has brought to his life. His comments meander into movies, songs, personal letters to authors, libraries, and his own life.

Just having access to the list of his books he read and the bonus list of the books that influenced him in these choices (included conveniently in the Appendices), made the book a valuable treasure map for me. 

Eclectic, fun, and insightful commentary on every page. It introduced me to many books I'd never even heard of and provided new interpretations over the ones I actually had read. Highly recommended for any book-lover seeking new titles and anyone else who appreciates cleverness in writing style and topics. 

Happy reading. 


Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Walton, Jo. What Makes This Book So Great? Rereading the Classics of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Over 130 essays on older, sometimes fogotten or overlooked science fiction and fantasy books. Walton writes with a passion and intellect for this genre, so uncovers many titles that sound tempting to plunge into yourself. (Previously reviewed here).

Queenan, Joe. One for the Books:

A voracious reader who sometimes is reading 15 books at the same time. His reviews are insightful, his titles pursued extensive, and his stories about reading, people, and books are wonderful. A must read for anyone who loves books. (Previously reviewed here)

A Reader's Book of Days

Nissley, Tom. A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year. New York: Norton. 2013. Print.

First Sentences:

January

You'd think more books would start in January. Does it not feel original enough to open a story with the new year? Or do we find more natural beginnings in the spring or when we return to work or school after the summer? What, after all, is born in the dead month of January besides a calendar?

Description:

Ever wonder which literary figures were born or died on a particular day? Curious about references to events in literature or real life that happened on specific days? Ever want quotes from books about characters thoughts on certain dates?

Yeah, me neither. Just bring on the books they wrote.

But with Tom Nissley's  A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year in hand, I found myself becoming more and more fascinated by the minutiae found on this literary calendar. Each page in A Reader's Book of Days represents one day of the year (after an introduction to the specific month), with birth and deaths of authors for that day noted, as well as several paragraphs detailing particular literary events in history or fiction that occurred on this day. On one short page there are plenty of interesting tidbits about authors, books, writing, quotes, and even some illustrations.

These can be quite addicting, even if you only try to read the listing for one day. I started off skipping around to important dates in my life to see what significant events happened then, but now have given up and am happily reading the entire calendar of days straight through from January 1 to December 31.

For example, here are a few sentences from the intro from a month selected at random, June, that are typically well-written by Nissley, unusually interesting, and certainly thought-provoking:

June is sickly sweet; it's insipid. Is that because it's so warm, or because it rhymes so easily? June, moon, spoon, balloon ... But while Robert Burns happily rhymed his "red, red rose / That' newly sprung in June" with a "melody / that's newly sprung in June," Gwendolyn Brooks burned off any sugar in the terse rhythms of "We Real Cool": her "Jazz June" is followed by "Die soon" ...

Continuing on to a random date in that month, June 2, we see that this is the birthday of Thomas Hardy (1840 - author of The Return of the Native) and Norton Juster (1929 - author of The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot and the Line). Who else besides Nissley remembers The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics, much less makes a reference to this fantastic line-drawing children's book? And that's why I love A Reader's Book of Days. 

June 2 is also marks the death of George S. Kaufman (1961 - author of The Man Who Came to Dinner) as well as these interesting, useless tidbits:

1963  Former car thief Jacky Maglia, a protege of Jean Genet, won a race in Belgium in a Lotus that Genet had paid for with a sizable loan from his publisher.

1977 Not yet forty, Raymond Carver had hit bottom and sobered up before, but never for long. After his first book of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, was nominated for a National Book Award in March, he stayed sober for a few weeks, but at the booksellers convention in San Francisco he went on a final bender....[A]fter the publisher offered him $5,000 to write a novel, his first book advance, Carver went to the bathroom to cry and then to the liquor store to celebrate. But on this day four days later, at a bar in Arcata, California, he took the last drink of his life.

1978  After not seeing his difficult father, Vladek, for a couple of years, Art Spiegelman went out to Queens to remind him he still wanted to draw a comic book about his life in Poland during the war.... now he sat down with him in earnest and began sketching out the pages that he would fashion, over the next thirteen years, into the two volumes of Maus, the history of his father's survival of the war and Auschwitz.

There are several other short instances found on this date as well, filling it's double-column format neatly onto one page. The references to literary works give glimpses into unknown as well as familiar books that make you want to go out and grab them for further reading... if only you could stop flipping through A Reader's Guide. 

You can see why delving into any date brings unexpected knowledge and personal delight as you learn about people and the world of writing. The trivia and events make this one of the hardest books to put down in my experience. Just try to stop after only one page, even if your eyes are drooping as you read in bed before going to sleep. Impossible.

It's one of the few books I can recommend unequivocally to any reader. It is the perfect bedside table book for yourself or a guest, always providing something new, unexpected, or just plain old astonishing. It probably would make a great gift, but I'll never part with it. Go get it and jump into this detailed world of books, authors, and writing. Hours of fascination, guaranteed.


Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Pearl, Nancy. Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason

The best book by far or succinct, witty, and passionate reviews of high-quality books for any situation from "Action Heroines," to "Aging," to "Zen Buddhism" and everything in between. (previously reviewed here)

Queenan, Joe. One For the Books

Queenan has read over 15,000 books in his lifetime, with no less than 15 going at the same time. His books reviews are opinionated, diverse, and witty and there are plenty of titles for him to discuss. (previously reviewed here) 

What Makes This Book So Great?

Walton, Jo. What Makes This Book So Great?. New York: Tor. 2014. Print.

First Sentences:

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who re-read and those who don't.

No, don't be silly. There are far more than two kinds of people in the world. There are even people who don't read at all. 

Description:

I do read some science fiction and fantasy, but usually stick to the masters like Clarke, Asimov, Tolkien, Heinlein, Bradbury, Lem, etc. My problem is there is a lot of sci-fi I simply don't respond to (too technologically complex, too fantastic, too bleak, too many strangely nuanced aliens and/or humans). So, to my secret shame, I rarely take the time even to read their first sentences. 

What I really need is a trusted reviewer like Nancy Pearl or Joe Queenan, someone who reads voraciously and can point me to quality sci-fi titles they have discovered which I can then explore for myself.

Enter Jo Walton, the Hugo Award-winning author and prodigious reader (and re-reader) of sci-fi and fantasy. She admits she reads (or re-reads) a book a day, often 5-6 when sick and confined to bed. And she writes about what she has read in short, highly passionate and readable reviews found on the sci-fi website Tor.com. Her writings have now been compiled in What Makes This Book So Great?, all of which introduce and recommend Walton's best of the best in sci-fi and fantasy books.

She starts by clearly defining the genre, showing me why I often am disappointed with pseudo-sci-fi:

In a science fiction novel, the world is a character, and often the most important character. In a mainstream novel, the world is implicitly our world, and the characters are the world. In a mainstream novel trying to be SF, this gets peculiar and can make the reading experience uneven. 

Besides close to 100 reviews of book, series, and authors in What Makes This Book So Great?, there are short pieces on related topics including the beauty of re-reading books, problems with traveling faster than the speed of light, reading long sci-fi series, the weirdest book in the world, how to talk to writers, cozy catastrophes (where the common people are conveniently wiped out and the rich are spared), the Suck Fairy (who destroys a beloved book that turns into trash upon later re-reading), and much more. 

Even better, I agree with her opinions on the few sci-fi/fantasy books that I actually have read. She recognizes The Lord of the Rings as the greatest fantasy book written. She's a Heinlein fan, too, even when his later books are not so great. 

And she explains "IWantToReadItosity," an often inexplicable urge for her. It is the overwhelming lure of some books that keeps her plugging through long series, re-reading favorites, and anticipating new titles from certain authors. This urge gives her strong subjective opinions of books "entirely separate from whether a book is actually good." For example, she likes Heinlein and Le Guin, but doesn't like Hesse and Huxley for admittedly unknown reasons. I feel a similar desire, and can be eagerly and totally absorbed in the world created by a favorite writer.

A Game of Thrones is eight hundred pages long, and I've read it six times, but even so, every time I put the bookmark in, I put it in reluctantly.

So now I'm at least willing to explore sci-fi with a little more confidence and open mind for some new authors. Now my to-be-read list has swelled to include, for their interesting titles alone as well as the intriguing plots:

• MIdnight's Children (Salman Rushdie) - children in India born on the eve of the revolution now posses super powers; 

• Babel-17 (Samual Delany) - focusing on an intergalactic war, an unbreakable alien code and an unhappy female telepathic poet;

• A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) - a universe "where not only technology but also the very ability to think increases with distance from the galactic core;" 

• Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (Samuel R. Delany) - "like pop rocks for the brain;"

• The Left Hand of Darkness  (Ursula K. Le Guin) - "one of those books that changed the world...it changed feminism, and it was part of the process to change of the concept of what it was to be a man or a woman;"

• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (Robert Heinlein) - in Walton's top five books, it tells of the revolution of lunar inhabitants against their controlling government. Who can resist this title?

If you are a reluctant sci-fi reader like me, someone looking for a new title in the genre, or just enjoy great writing by a skilled reviewer, jump into What Makes This Book So Great. Ideas, challenges, the beauty of quality writing by the author, and exciting recommended titles is the reward for anyone who picks up this book.

I am talking about books because I love books. I'm not standing on a mountain peak holding them at arm's length and issuing Olympian pronouncements about them. I'm reading them in the bath and shouting with excitement because I have noticed something that is really really cool.

She is my new hero for writing such compelling reviews which make you want to read everything that she brings to your attention. I can only hope to write one tenth as well about books with her passion and wit. Well, I can dream, can't I?

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Pearl, Nancy. Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason

Simply the best source for short,.highly entertaining and passionate book reviews for a huge variety of books. Makes you want to get each one and begin reading immediately.

Queenan, Joe. One for the Books

An insatiable reader who is absorbed in at least 15 books at a time, Queenan provides his strong opinions on popular and forgotten books on a wide range of topics, enough to satisfy any reading itch. (previously reviewed here)

Introduction to The First Sentence Reader

Call me Fred.  

A terse, yet friendly opening line to introduce the author (me) of this new blog about books. Shows a certain style, don't you think? For sure, a blatant appeal to your literary sense with this play on other great first lines: “Call me Ishmael” (Herman Melville’s Moby Dick),” Call me Jonah” (Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle) or even “Call me Smitty” (Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel). Even Calvin starts his journal with "Call me Calvin, Boy Genius. Hope of Mankind." So I am in good company.

But why start a new blog with this particular sentence? Because I feel the first line is critical to making you, the reader, continue to read. That is the goal for every author. And I do want you to continue reading my blog, if for no other reason than to hear me out on my radical theory for how to select quality books to read, and then in later posts to share some of these titles with you.

Riddle me this: How do we choose to read the books we read? What makes us willing to devote our precious time to a particular book over other temptations? Its cover? Length? Pictures? Characters? Plot? Writing style? Book club demands?  To read it or not to read it, that is the challenge of the times we live in, with the constant siren calls of Web sites, games, news articles, Twitter feeds, Facebook, blogs, recipes, and reviews requesting your time. This is a very important decision: how and why we select which books deserve our time.

And then once a book is selected, what makes us keep reading it or decide to call it quits, if we have the strength and commitment to actually stop reading and move on? How much of a chance to we give a book? The entire book? 50 pages? 10 pages? Less? Are you a member of the clean-plate-finish-every-book-no-matter-what club or can you set a book down, with no intention to ever pick it up again?

I submit that it is the very first sentence of a book that makes or breaks any hopes it might have to capture our attention and be deemed worthy of our time. The tone for the entire book is set by how the author selects and uses those first words to convey the foundation of the book, its emotion, characters, and action. These words show the author's commitment to create an interesting situation that will make us want to read more. 

Works that start off poorly, in my experience, rarely improve in style, characters, plot, etc., so why should I continue spending time with these books to the end?  Any author who is confident that a reader will patiently give him/her additional time, say 50 pages, to develop these areas and grab our interest is fooling him/herself. (OK, I've been PC enough with the s/he attempts. From now on, I'll use the masculine pronoun with the understanding this is inclusive of women as well.) 

I for one simply won't spend hours on a book that on the first page already requires I must slog through it. The telling signs of my impatience include: 1) checking how many pages are left in the chapter; 2) skimming to another chapter: 3) hefting the book to estimate the time I will have to be involved in this book before I can start another one. These actions are huge red flags telling me to stop reading. Other books are calling, so I have no problem cutting my losses after one paragraph, sentence or first page, abandoning that book, and dipping into something else more interesting.

Skeptical? OK. Try it yourself. Get up and go grab one of your own favorite books and take a look at the first sentence and first paragraph. (If the book is not readily available, you can often find the first sentence in the "Look Inside" link in its Amazon listing, my new way of identifying quality reads). Notice the presence of three key elements that are introduced immediately - interesting characters, quality writing style, and intriguing story line or topic - and then critically evaluate these by your own definition of quality and interest.  Probably, you found something in this favorite book which you immediately liked and were intrigued enough to keep reading.

Now pick up any book you were disappointed with and examine its first sentences. What did this author give you from the onset to make you turn the pages? Not much is my bet. Probably you noticed that the first page was slow in the introduction of plot and character, the writing style not to your liking for some reason, the plot forgettable, offensive, or uninteresting to you. Need you read further to reinforce your first impression? 

If you still need convincing, open that same disappointing book to any random page and read a few paragraphs. Probably you'll find the plot, style, and characters have not improved. What you saw originally is carried out throughout the book. While it might be considered a good book by some standards, for you it is just not a great book.

I am now only looking for the great, the fascinating, compelling, and memorable reads, and don't want to pursue unsatisfying works that disappoint from the opening sentences. Sure, I probably missed out on a couple of good books, but likewise I have not wasted a huge amount of time hoping a bodice-ripper will eventually turn out to be another Anna Karenina. "Entice me or you're gone" is my motto. (I do have my own quirky exceptions to this rule -- non-fiction on topics I have an interest in and very long novels -- but more about those in a later post.)

Big talk, you're probably thinking. Show me some examples. So now it's Quiz Time. Take a look at the first lines below. See how many catch your interest. How many can you identify? (answers at the end of this post).

First Sentences:

1. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. 

2. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. 

3. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. 

4. I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie  ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. 

5. This is the saddest story I have ever heard. 

6. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 

7. You better not never tell nobody but God. 

8. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. 

9. Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. 

10. All children, except one, grow up. 

11. As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. 

12. It was a pleasure to burn. 

13. Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. 

14. This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.  

15. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard.                

                       [Answers are below. Go ahead and peek.]

Well, was I right? Didn't each one of these opening sentences grab you enough that you were curious to want to read more? Even if a particular sentence was not your cup of tea, you have to admit that each one demonstrated a writing style that stands out above the norm of most books.

If none of these sentences grabbed you, no problem. It's OK. We all have our individual tastes for plot, character, and style. There are plenty of other opening lines out there for you to pursue and be hooked on according to your own preference. Keep looking until you find these great reads written by authors who want your attention and have taken the trouble to create compelling openings. Don't settle for anything less and continue to read a disappointing book just to say you have finished it. When you are only reading the first sentences, you can evaluate a large number of books quickly!

This first sentence/paragraph indicator of quality is the philosophy I will defend in this blog, presenting books that I have not merely read, but savored, and now want to share with you. The titles selected for postings might come from current best seller lists, or have drifted to obscurity over time. In these postings, I'll give you the title, opening sentence, link to that book on Amazon for more information, and a short (with no spoilers) review, hoping to peak your interest to read the book for yourself.

Check back tomorrow for the first book of this blog. After that, there will be 1-2 weekly posts (I hope!). I've have lots of titles to tempt you. Maybe you will be willing to share your favorites as well. And I promise future posts will not be so long as this one!

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com (Other recommendations) 

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First Line Quiz Answers

1.  Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (1813)

2.  Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (1877)

3.  1984, George Orwell  (1949)

4.   Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (1952)

5.  The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford  (1915)
6.  The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald  (1925)

7.  The Color Purple, Alice Walker  (1982)

8.  I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (1948)
9.  Middle Passage, Charles Johnson  (1990)
10. Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie  (1911)
11. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka  (1915) 

12. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury  (1953)

13. Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell  (1936)

14. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins  (1860)

15. Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathaniel West,  (1933)

Examples above were culled from personal readings and also: 

Novel First Sentences 

100 Best First Lines of Novels 

Books (First Lines)